Bush to bin Laden
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The White House has asked U.S. networks to limit broadcasts of statements by
Osama bin Laden. I wish that instead of censorship, the president would respond to
him. Here's what Mr. Bush could say:
Dear bin Laden: I've listened to the statement you released through Al Jazeera TV. Since
I know that no Arab or Muslim leader will dare answer you, I thought I would do it. Let me
be blunt: Your statement was pathetic. It's obvious from what you said that you don't
have a clue why we're so strong or why the Arab regimes you despise are so weak.
You spoke about the suicide attacks on us as being just revenge for the "80 years of
humiliation and disgrace" the Islamic nation has gone through. You referred to the
hijackers as a Muslim vanguard sent "to destroy America," the leader of the "international
infidels," and you denounced the Arab regimes as "hypocrites" and "hereditary rulers."
What was most revealing, though, was what you didn't say: You offered no vision of the
future. This was probably your last will and testament I sure hope so and you could
have said anything you wanted to future generations. After all, it was your mike. Yet you
had nothing to say. Your only message to the Muslim world was whom to hate, not what
to build let alone how.
In part it's because you really don't know much about Islamic history. The Muslim world
reached the zenith of its influence in the Middle Ages when it preserved the best of
classical Greek and Roman teachings, and inspired breakthroughs in mathematics,
science, medicine and philosophy. That is also when Islam was at its most open to the
world, when it enriched, and was enriched by, the Christian, Greek and Jewish
communities in its midst whom you now disparage as infidels and when it was actively
trading with all corners of the world. Your closed, inward, hate-filled version of Islam
which treats women as cattle and all non-Muslims as enemies corresponds with no
period of greatness for Islam, and will bring none.
It was also revealing that the only Arab state you mentioned was Iraq. Interesting Iraq is
led by a fascist dictator, Saddam Hussein, who used poison gas against his own people,
who squandered Iraq's oil wealth to build himself palaces and who raped Kuwait. But you
are silent about all that. What bothers you is our targeted sanctions to end such a regime
not the regime itself.
In other words, you not only don't understand the Muslim past, you don't understand its
present. The reason these past 80 years have been so stagnant for the Arab-Muslim
world is not because we in America have been trying to keep you down. Actually, we
haven't been thinking about you much at all. No, the difference between American power,
Chinese power, Latin American power and Arab-Muslim power today is what we've each
been doing for these past 80 years. We and others have been trying to answer many
questions: How do we best educate our kids? How do we increase our trade? How do
we build an industrial base? How do we increase political participation? And we judged
our leaders on how well they answered all those questions.
But people like you want Arabs and Muslims to ask only one question of their leaders:
How well did you fight the infidels and Israelis? I know that who rules Jerusalem is a
deeply important part of your heritage, and every Arab-Muslim leader must address it.
But it can't be the only question. Yet, because people like you have reduced it to the
only question, and tried to intimidate every Arab who wanted to ask other questions, you
have allowed your region to be led by scoundrels, like Saddam.
Yes, you've wreaked some havoc, bin Laden, but don't flatter yourself into thinking you
can destroy us. You have to build something strong to destroy something strong. But
you can't. Because all the intellectual and creative energies in the Arab-Muslim world
which are as bountiful as in any other region can never reach their full potential under
repressive regimes like Iraq or leaders like yourself.
Stalin and Mao killed a lot of their own people, but even these thugs had a plan for their
societies. You, bin Laden, are nothing but a hijacker a hijacker of Islam, a hijacker of
other people's technology, a hijacker of a vast Arab nation's anger at its own regimes.
But you have no vision and no plan for your people. Which is why your epitaph will be
easy to write:
Osama bin Laden he destroyed much, he built nothing. His lasting impact was like a
footprint in the desert.
tom watson tosiwmee |
